Winemakers say new law allowing direct sales is a win-win situation

Local vineyard owners say a new law allowing small wineries to bypass distributors and ship directly to customers is a huge win for their industry, even though it may take several years for them to realize significant profits from the direct sales business.

The legal changes in the wine industry — which also triples the number of places where wines can be sampled — gives area vintners hope that New Jersey’s fastest growing form of agriculture will no longer be a homegrown secret.

“For small wineries trying to gain exposure and grow, this is a way to help capture customers outside our nearby perimeters,” said Cameron Stark, winemaker at Unionville Vineyards in Ringoes. “This levels the playing field so we can compete with the rest of the country. We can get our wines to people in California and New York if someone wants them.”

The law, which takes effect in May, revises the statutes governing the sale and distribution of products by New Jersey wineries and creates a new out-of-state winery license governing New Jersey sales by wineries licensed elsewhere.

“Consumers can purchase just about anything these days through shipping,” said Assemblywoman Celeste Riley (D-Gloucester/Salem/Cumberland), a sponsor of the legislation. “Wine, as long as it’s as carefully regulated as this law will do, should be no different.

Our current laws are holding our wine industry back and ensuring they remain less competitive with wineries in other states, and that must change for the better.”

Customers can have up to 12 cases of wine per year shipped to them for personal consumption from a winery that produces 250,000 gallons of wine or less annually, according to the legislation.

And while many winemakers predict that it will take years before they can build up a profitable business shipping wines to other parts of the state and beyond, another piece of the law will have an immediate effect on sales, they said.

Wineries will now be able to place their products in up to 15 offsite “tasting rooms” — more often than not BYOB, or Bring Your Own Bottle, restaurants. This allows consumers to try local wines in urban and suburban centers rather than travel to the rural areas where they are made, proponents say.

Currently, wineries are limited to five outlets, including their own onsite tasting room.

For Hopewell Valley Vineyards owner Sergio Neri, who markets his wines in restaurants in Lawrence, Princeton, Flemington and beyond, that change is a huge boon for his business.

“At least 30 to 35 percent of the sales we did last year came from the outlets,” he said. “This more than doubles our business immediately. It’s a major improvement for us. It’s a chance for all small wineries to make it.”

Restaurants without liquor licenses can purchase permits to sell products from a single winery. Camillo Tortola, owner of Camillo’s Café in Princeton, markets Hopewell Valley Vineyard products. Last year he sold 1,500 bottles of the wine, which he describes as a perfect complement to his authentic Italian fare.

The ability to sell wine this way is crucial to all small vineyards in New Jersey, where alcohol sales laws are some of the strictest in the nation, Tortola said.

“The sales laws are beyond prohibitive — they’re really, really crippling,” said Tortola, a sommelier who, like Neri, was born in Italy. “But still these small vineyards somehow produce revenues.”

Mark Carduner, an owner of Silver Decoy Winery in East Windsor, said the new law ushers in a new chapter in the New Jersey’s growing winery industry. When Carduner and his four buddies opened Silver Decoy in 2001, there were only 11 wineries in the state. Now the number is close to 50, he said.

“Our business as an industry is just getting its feet under it,” Carduner said. “This (new law) is an opportunity for vineyards like ours to keep our doors open and pay back the banks that loaned us the money to get started.”